System Integration

As the solar industry continues to squeeze out cost reductions, 1,500V architecture is tipped to make its mark in 2017. John Parnell looks at the potential pitfalls and likely winners as utility-scale plants dial up the voltage.

Project Briefing: Middle East's largest PV plant lands in Jordan - Assessment of the local conditions, grid connection, components, O&M, finance involved with Inside First Solar’s 52MW Shams Ma’an plant.

Sandfire Resources, a mid-tier Australian mining company that operates the mine, called on developers to co-locate not only a solar power plant, but also a utility-scale energy storage system alongside its existing diesel power station. Showcasing the latest technological advances, the newly completed project in the Peak Hill Mineral Field has been hailed as one of the largest renewable energy systems installed at a mine anywhere in the world and certainly the largest in Australia.

Microinverters and power optimisers have become increasingly common features of smaller PV systems. Sara ver Bruggen reports on the technologies’ gradual transition into larger commercial and utility-scale applications.

With competition in the tracker marketplace becoming extremely fierce, rival companies are adding new features all the time aimed at minimising installation and operation costs, and enhancing durability. Here we profile some of the single-axis trackers currently available on the market and the innovative design features they offer.

The renewable energy market is currently booming, with large numbers of PV systems being installed throughout the world. However, a primary objective of any PV power system is to ensure that the system operates continuously and reliably. As Vicente Salas from the Universidad Carlos III de Madrid (UC3M) explains, this aspect takes on special relevance in the case of utility-scale PV projects.

PV modules are subjected to various loads during installation handling. Research teams from the Institute for Solar Energy Research Hamelin (ISFH) and Hanwha Q CELLS attended the installations of PV modules in order to develop various test sequences for quantifying the effects of handling loads on the modules. As a result of these observations, lab tests have been designed to evaluate the impact of module-handling loads on cell cracking in the modules. Some rules for module handling are subsequently proposed.

Inside Cestas, Europe's largest solar project.

Chile’s Atacama Desert has some of the best irradiance resources on the planet but also some of the harshest operation conditions. Scientists are working on a new type of bifacial glass-glass PV module, AtaMo, designed to make the best of the region’s resources while withstanding its rigours. Here they outline some promising preliminary results from the project.

Power oscillation | In the last few years the power rating of PV power plants has risen very quickly to values reaching several hundred megawatts. This means there are hundreds, or even thousands, of inverters operating in parallel in these plants. Furthermore, these large-scale PV power plants are often built far away from cities and are therefore connected to the grid via long transmission lines. This leads to weak grid conditions in the power plants, and these conditions give rise to the risk of electrical instabilities within the plant, or instabilities of the plant within the grid. Roland Singer of Fraunhofer ISE explains how these electrical instabilities can be detected and counteracted.